Recommended

Support us

Binoculars review

Delta Optical Chase 10x42 ED

In March 2017 the Polish Delta Optical company announced a launch of a new series of binoculars called Chase ED. The series was supposed to consist of four models with the following parameters: 8×42, 10×42, 10×50 and 12×50.

All binoculars are roof prisms Schmidt-Pechan instruments with silver-coated reflective layers. The producer doesn’t mention anything about phase correction coating but all air-to-glass surfaces are supposed to be covered by multilayer antireflection coatings. In objective lenses low-dispersion ED glass was used.

The bodies of the binoculars are compact, with an inner focusing mechanism and dioptre correction so these instruments are completely waterproof and nitrogen-filled.

Buyers get a case, a clearing cloth plus caps for eyepieces and objective lenses in the box. The product comes with a 10-year warranty period.

Distance between the first curved line and the field centre compared to the field of view radius: 49% ±5%

5/10.0

Coma

Appears far from the centre, in a distance of about 75% of the field of view radius and is a bit higher than medium on the edge.

7.4/10.0

Blurring at the edge of the FOV

Blur occurs in a distance of 85% ± 3% from the field of view centre.

7/10.0

Darkening at the edge the FOV

Moderate.

3.8/5.0

Whiteness of the image

A slight inclination of the transmission curve. About 5-6% of difference between red and blue light. A good result.

4.1/5.0

Collimation

Perfect.

5/5.0

Internal reflections

Left:

Right:

A semblance of a false pupil.

3.1/5.0

Housing

Very stylish and shapely. Rubber armour of good quality but a tad too slippery. Rubber sticks to the casing very well. Slight rubberized eyecups with three stops. Produced in China.

7.7/8.0

Focusing

Huge, ribbed central wheel which works properly well and its full range amounts to as much as 900 degrees. You really have to do a lot of turning. A joystick next to the central wheel controls the dioptre values. Nothing moves outsider – a rare occurrence at this price point.

5/5.0

Tripod

A comfy exit.

3/3.0

Interpupilary distance

from 55.8 to 76mm

5/6.0

Closest focusing distance

2.05 meters.

2/2.0

Eyepieces FOV

Apparent field of view of 62.9 degrees.

7/10.0

Field of view

Measured by us amounted to 6.28 ± 0.04 degrees and it was a bit narrower than stated in official specifications. A sensible field for this class of equipment.

6.5/8.0

Quality of the interior of the barrels

Nicely blackened, matted and ribbed tubes. A wide bottom, black near the prisms, the smaller case is grey. Some specks of dust on the prisms.

4.1/5.0

Vignetting

Left:

Right:

OL: 2.91%, OR: 3.42%

3.5/8.0

Prisms quality

Good quality BaK-4.

8/8.0

Antireflection coatings

Pink-yellow-green on objective lenses, green-blue on prisms, green-purple-yellow on eyepieces. Intensity a bit higher than medium.

We would like to start the summary of our test by describing the casing of the Chase 10×42 ED because, in my opinion, it is one of serious assets of this pair of binoculars. First of all you deal here with a small, handy instrument and the photo above is the proof. What’s more the casing’s design is really good – the binoculars look simply nice, there’s no doubt of it. The same should be said about accessories, properly fitting and appropriately selected. The rainguard might be an example. In many cases a rainguard consists of just a black cover which colour doesn’t match the rest of the instrument; often the whole series gets the same size of the rainguard, no matter how big particular sets of binoculars are. Here you deal with a small blind stopper which comes in different sizes so it fits particular models in a perfect way.

The casing itself features one more interesting thing, characteristic for models far pricier than this one. As the inner focusing is already a standard when it comes to roof prism instruments, the dioptre correcting system usually entails moving the whole right eyepiece. In the tested binoculars the dioptre values are set by the movement of inner optics elements, a solution typical for top-of-the-range devices. Such a system is especially important if you want your instrument to be completely sealed.

When it comes to optical properties you have one serious reason to complain and two less important ones. First of all small physical dimensions of the binoculars caused the truncation of exit pupils. Then, in order to make you completely happy, the instrument could have had a tad better distortion correction and coatings of higher quality.

The graph above shows that the transmission level can hardly be called impressive. Still you must also say that, at this price point, it is perhaps not very bad either and the graph remains quite flat so the colour rendering is good.

In the rest of optical categories of our test the results reached by the Delta Optical Chase 10×42 ED were good or very good; as a result the final score amounts to slightly more than 130 points. The tested pair of binoculars seems to be a worthy rival of many more expensive models and I don’t doubt it is going to become a market hit pretty soon.

This site is not responsible for any damage that the information on this site may cause to your system.
It is illegal to copy or redistribute any information found on this site in any way without the expressed written consent of CO-NET Robert Olech
Wydawcą allbinos.com jest firma CO-NET Robert Olech. Adres wydawcy oraz redakcji: ul. Żwirki i Wigury 11/34 83-000 Pruszcz Gdański

The allbinos.com website uses cookies which are saved on your computer. We employ that technology for functional, statistical and marketing reasons. Cookies allow us to monitor the users' actions on a given page, target the marketing content with a greater accuracy and generally make the interaction between the website and our Visitors easier and faster e.g. by allowing you to log in automatically. Cookies can also be used by our advertisers and the Google Analytics tool which gathers statistical data. If you visit Optyczne.pl and your browser accepts the cookies we assume that you agree with our policy and have nothing against saving them in the memory of your device. If you find it too intrusive you can always change the settings to block cookies. Go here to find out how to set up your browser in order to accept or block cookies and more.